Simple Authentication

Simple authentication is an approach to authenticate customers once they provide their email address or custom ID. It allows for synchronization of data between Synerise and your database, ensuring consistency and an accurate profiling of customers. However, once you create a customer’s profile using this authentication method, it cannot be deleted.

When configuring simple authentication, you can enable an authentication salt. It’s a randomized string that your application must send with the authentication request. This provides an additional layer of security by reducing the risk of requests being made from outside the application. We strongly recommend using this option.

The implementation of this authentication method is straightforward, requiring the usage of a single method. Unlike other authentication standards, it does not involve intercommunication between your application’s backend and Synerise’s backend. Instead, customer data is transmitted through a device for validation and authorization.

Additionally, in the Synerise platform (app.synerise.com) you can define the following settings:

• Assignment of loyalty card
• JWT longevity

Simple authentication proves particularly useful in scenarios when:

• you have a large customer base
• you don’t require OAuth, which in most cases is recommended

Integration process

1. In the Synerise platform (app.synerise.com), go to Settings > API keys and create or update the Profile key.
   1. In the Permissions section, enable the following permissions:
      • SAUTH_SIMPLE_AUTH_CREATE (the Auth group)
      • API_PERSONAL_INFORMATION_CLIENT_READ
      • SAUTH_LOGOUT_CLIENT_CREATE
   2. In the Simple authentication section:
      1. Enable the Simple authentication toggle.
      2. If you want to use a salt when authenticating, enable the Authentication salt toggle.
         Result: A randomized salt is generated. It will need to be included in your mobile application (described further in this article).
         Important: We recommend enabling the salt. This improves the security of your requests by adding a layer of client/server authentication.

         

   3. In the Profile modification allowlist section, allow modification of the following profile attributes:
      • UUID
      • email or customId (choose the identifier you will use in this method)
        Note: You can learn more about creating API keys in the Synerise platform here.
2. If you enabled the Authentication salt: Insert the salt into the initialization script.
   WARNING: It is your responsibility to ensure the secure storage of the salt in your application. We highly recommend keeping the salt encrypted.
   You can find the Synerise initialization scripts in the articles below:
   • Android
   • iOS
   • React Native
   • Flutter
3. As a sign-in method, implement this method. In the customer’s data object, authId (unique identifier of a customer in your data base), email or customId parameters are required. As a result of this method, the client.simpleAuthLogin event is generated on the activity list of a customer in the Synerise platform in the Profiles mode.
   Click here to see the event body

   {
     "action": "client.simpleAuthLogin",
     "eventUUID": "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
     "unique": null,
     "createDate": 1689166104952,
     "label": "Simple auth client login",
     "params": {
       "ip": "xxx.xx.xxx.xx"
     }
   }

   A customer logged in with this method is assigned with a simple authentication token (a JWT) whose longevity you can define in the Synerise platform.
4. To check if a customer is signed in through simple authentication, use this method.
   Important: To check if a customer is signed in with other authentication types, use this method

Authentication use cases

Troubleshooting

• If the authID value is not unique, there is a risk of generating the same UUID for various customers which results in an error. This is because the UUID is generated based on the authID value
• An error may occur when email or customId is not unique and there is an attempt to update a customer with other’s customer email or customId.

Best practices

• Check if a customer is signed in with this method.
• Use the simple authentication method only for logging in and updating a customer’s data.
• Provide a sign-out feature with this method.

Authentication methods

This method authenticates a customer with simple authentication.

Other methods

Check if a customer is signed in

This method checks if a customer is signed in through simple authentication.

Customer sign out

This method signs out the customer. The method terminates the JWT token and ends the customer session.

What’s next

When the customer’s is signed in, you can implement profile management methods and session management methods.